trivial-channels

This is a very, very trivial implementation of channels (and a queue). I find myself using it in a few places where very trivial message passing is needed and a more complex, robust solution would be overkill.

(let ((channel (make-channel)))
  (sendmsg channel 'anything)
  (recvmsg channel)) ;; => ANYTHING

API

• (make-channel): Make a channel
• (sendmsg CHANNEL OBJECT): Send OBJECT on CHANNEL
• (recvmsg CHANNEL &optional TIMEOUT): Receive on CHANNEL, optionally timing out after TIMEOUT seconds
• (getmsg CHANNEL): Get a message if available, or NIL
• (hasmsg CHANNEL): Whether the channel has a message. No guarantee it will still have one after the call, if there are multiple receivers sharing a channel.

Notably, recvmsg supports a timeout. These functions properly lock and it's safe to share a channel between threads (that being the entire purpose).

Usage

While trivial-channels should be simple enough you can adapt it to many usage patterns, for simple bi-directional message passing I have found it easiest to simply pass a message with a return-channel included:

;;; Sender:
(defvar *global-listener* (make-channel))
(defvar *done* nil)

(let* ((return-channel (make-channel))
       (msg (cons 'value return-channel)))
  (sendmsg *global-listener* msg)
  (recvmsg return-channel))

;;; Meanwhile, in another thread:
(loop until *done* do
  (let ((msg (recvmsg *global-listener*)))
    (let ((value (car msg))
          (channel (cdr msg)))
      ;; insert useful things here
      (sendmsg channel ...))))

Of course, you needn't create a new return channel every time, either, if you are worried about consing, but this is an easy way to pass functions to a specific thread, implement actors, etc.

Queues

The queue used to implement this is also available via the package :trivial-channels.queue, since it's sometimes handy to have a trivial queue, too.

Queues do not lock.

Queues are implemented with conses.

• (make-queue): Make a queue
• (queue-head Q): Head of the queue
• (queue-tail Q): Tail of the queue
• (queue-add-cons Q CONS): CONS becomes the tail of the queue; its CDR may be destructively modified
• (queue-add Q ITEM): Add ITEM to the tail of the queue
• (queue-push Q ITEM): Push ITEM onto the front of the queue
• (queue-pop Q): Pop and return and item from the queue, or NIL
• (queue-pop-cons Q): Pop and return the cons from the queue, or NIL
• (queue-has-item-p Q): If there are items in the queue, or NIL
• (queue-peek Q): The front item in the queue, or NIL
• (queue-pop-to Q1 Q2): Pop an item from Q1 and add it to Q2 without consing
• (queue-prepend-to Q1 Q2): Remove all items from Q1 and prepend them to Q2 without consing; no value returned

All add or remove type operations return the item (or cons) being handled, unless otherwise noted.